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Logic
by Kathleen McCarthy
Failin Rayner considered himself a reasonable man.The law said that werewolves were destructive creatures and must be killed on sight. This particular little family might not be all werewolves, true, but the father certainly was, and probably the children as well. His own son went to dame’s school with the girl, and reported that she was aloof, quiet, a dangerous sign. Failin himself had seen the father about town, his wife following dark and mute in his wake. Dangerous, hazardous, certainly.
Failin had been to the university. He knew dangerous men when he saw them. He had joined this—hmm—council of concerned citizens, to protect himself and his family. It was only reasonable.
He marched up the chill, slick path towards the werewolf’s house and shivered. It was a dark night, the dark of the moon, and the men needed their torches to even be able to see in the gloom under the trees. A forboding atmosphere, to be sure, but the werewolf could not harm them if they stuck together. Not at the dark of the moon, when a werewolf had no power beyond that of an ordinary man.
Ahead of him, the head of the group came to a halt at the head of the trail, where the werewolf’s house crouched dark in an unknown clearing. Failin made his way up to the front where Broderic Pastner, the nominal leader of the party hesitated, his torch flickering shadows over his face. “Well?” he hissed.
“Should we storm the place?” Broderic hissed back. “We have more than enough men…”
“Let’s keep this civilized,” Failin said, alarmed at the thought of storming a house. Good God, that would make them no better than animals. “We’ll go in through the door.”
Broderic seemed to find this a reasonable prospect, and without further ado marched up to the front door and knocked. After a pause, in which no sound came from within the house, Broderic knocked again, then tried the handle. Surprisingly, it turned in his hand.
Perhaps not so surprisingly. Folk hereabouts didn’t lock their doors at night; there were no bandits about, and the werewolf had kept a low enough profile that his depredations hadn’t come to the public eye. He would want to fit in among the others. Failin nodded at this explanation, and followed Broderic, the others accompanying him in a swift, noiseless entry. They doused their torches in a snowbank beside the front door and hurried up the steps and into the house.
The house was completely dark. Broderic grabbed Failin’s arm and shoved him in the direction of the stairs. Several other men followed him up as Broderic took the rest towards the main floor of the house.
Their entry must not have been noiseless enough, because as Failin topped the stairs, a dark-haired woman in a loose white nightgown exited one of the rooms, carrying a candle that illuminated her face and showed her shock and fear as plainly as day. Failin recognized the werewolf’s wife and rushed her, knocking the candle from her hand and shoving her to the ground. She went noiselessly, her voice stolen by the shock or only gone altogether. Failin ignored her and moved on, letting the men behind him take care of her.
The room she had exited was that of a child—no, children. The girl was awake in her bed, sitting up as though to bring the woman, her mother, back into the room. Her eyes widened when she saw Failin, and she opened her mouth in a scream. “No! Mama!”
He came forward, slammed the butt of his gun across the back of her head, then shot her. She collapsed, blood staining the white sheets that tangled about her body and prevented an escape. Beside her, a small boy began to scream shrilly at the sight of the blood, and threw himself over his sister’s body. “No hurt Ellyn! No hurt Ellyn!”
In the uncertain light of the candle set by the bedside, the boy’s fingers briefly resembled claws as he clutched at his sister. Failin shot him, calmly, and taking careful aim. There was no need to make the boy suffer. He needed to be put down, of course, but there was no need for him to suffer.
Failin left the children where they lay and exited the room, taking the candle with him. The woman was curled in a ball on the ground, her white nightgown stained with blood; she’d been shot, dozens of times. He looked up at the men, and shook his head at them. “Christ, men,” he said, curling his lip, ”could you not contain yourself? We are here for a clean extermination, nothing more. You don’t need to hurt them more than necessary. We are civilized men, after all.”
The men rolled their eyes, shifted, made whispered comments that he ignored. Failin shook his head again, and gestured them downstairs, where they met with Broderic.
“No sign of the werewolf,” Broderic said, sighing. “Did you get the others?”
“All dead,” Failin affirmed. “I took care of the children myself, and the men got the wife. Do you think we should…?”
Broderic shook his head. “Let’s get back to town. We’ll find the man in the morning.”
***
The men trudged back to town, weary, and were greeted by their women before being led away to their homes. Only Failin, who had sent his family safely elsewhere, and Broderic, who had never married, settled themselves against the frozen fountain for a wait.It was not a long wait. Less than an hour after they settled, a man staggered into the light of the torches, his hands crooked into claws and smeared with blood, his eyes wild. The men jumped to their feet and put their hands to their guns, eyeing him warily. The werewolf at last.
“Hana,” the werewolf said, almost a whimper. “Ellyn, Jerrell, for God’s sake, they were children! Couldn’t you have left the children?” His voice sank again, and he tripped, stumbled, kept his feet with difficulty. “Not even the children. Oh, God, not even the children. My poor children.”
Failin didn’t know quite what to say. Weren’t werewolves supposed to be unemotional?
“Hana was guiltless!” the werewolf roared suddenly, throwing himself forward a few steps. “Her only crime was loving me! And Ellyn, Jerrell, God, God, you men are monsters! You could not even leave the children.”
Broderic stepped forward; Failin laid a hand on his arm to stop him, and shook his head. The werewolf was clearly in an illogical state of mind.
“Give me your gun,” the werewolf continued, staggering towards Broderic. “Let me have a clean death, if there is any mercy in you at all! In Christ’s name…”
Failin shot him in the chest. The werewolf let out a choked cry and fell to his knees again, but he did not touch the wound. Instead he looked up at Failin, his eyes full of such hate that Failin almost stepped back.
“Why?” he asked. “Why them? Why not just me?”
Failin opened his mouth, then closed it, then opened it again. This time, it was Broderic who fired. The werewolf fell back into the snow and did not rise again.
“It was only reasonable,” Failin found himself saying, over and over. “We did what we had to. It was only reasonable.”
Broderic lowered his gun, and shook his head. “It is done.”
© McCarthy, 2007
TO COMMENT ON THIS STORY CLICK HEREKathleen McCarthy has been writing since she was six, and reading since she was even younger. Her short stories have appeared in the anthologies “Invitations” and “Modern Magic, Witches and Wizards,” and her poetry in the webzines "Aphelion" and "Worlds of Wonder."